This is not a farewell

Hello, everyone! Our time in Malaga is almost over, so we would like to do a little recap of all the things we’ve done in these past six months.

We worked every day from Monday through Friday, from 9:15 to 14:45. During those hours at school, we helped the English and French teachers in their classes, helped our Erasmus+ students get ready for their exchange, and organized our workshops and activities. When it comes to the issues and topics we addressed with the students, we had to follow an educational plan that is the same in the whole of Andalusia, but we were also free to choose how to address those topics or to add new ones to the plan. For example, we talked about the environment by underlining the problem of waste management and disposal, we discussed gender equity in the world of videogames, we taught the students about Europe by making them play two Kahoot quizzes, and we tried to raise awareness on LGBTphobia by discussing it in class with the older students and organizing a talk with a local LGBT+ association. It wasn’t always a piece of cake to manage all those activities, because we had to match schedules, prepare materials, repeat the same lessons over and over again and suit them to the students’ different ages. However, we are very proud of what we did and hope to have made a little bit of a difference in our community.

We also tried to bring back to life the old student association. There is still work to be done with it, but we can say that it was a start. The association has around ten members now, that meet up with us once a week. Our first action was to ask the schoolboard for some improvements. The students were complaining that the two sport courts in the building are dangerous, as the ground and the stands are falling apart and some of their schoolmates got injured during PE classes. So we helped them write down a formal paper asking the schoolboard to fix the courts and presented it to the schoolboard meeting, with the help of the students’ representatives. Now we’re waiting for changes to happen and crossing fingers that our voices be heard.

But the association was not only boring paperwork! We also played games, had breakfast together with other schoolmates, and last Friday we had a water fight to end this school year in a refreshing way.

Apart from the activities we did with the students and teachers, we also kept a blog and an Instagram account, where you can find pictures, stories and materials from our six months at I.E.S. Pablo Picasso.

Before saying goodbye, we would like to thank the school staff that has been working with us during these months. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the chance to bond with every single one of them, because they are too many. But the ones we worked and talked with on a daily basis were amazing. The teachers, the headmaster, the janitors and even the cleaning ladies were friendly and welcoming with us from the very first moment we set foot in the school. We felt accepted and treated as equals despite our differences in age, roles and experience. So thank you very much to all of you, we are very happy and lucky to have worked with you. And, of course, a special thanks goes to our mentor Laura, without whom our project in Malaga wouldn’t have been possible and who was always caring and ready to help us.

We also want to wish good luck to the new volunteers that are coming in September. The school is great, the staff is amazing, the students can be annoying from time to time but they are very loving, and this experience will change your life, for better or for worse (we hope it’s for better). We wish you the best luck and to make the most of every day you will spend here.

Now, as the headline goes, this is not a farewell. See you all soon!